


Let Me Live in Your Country, Let Me Sleep By Your Shores

by elrhiarhodan



Series: In War, as is in Peace [1]
Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Epistolary, Hartwin, Longing, M/M, Masturbation, Not Tailors, Pining, WWI AU, alternative universe, don't be afraid to touch your meat, hidden messages, mmom, not spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 05:38:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14586126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elrhiarhodan/pseuds/elrhiarhodan
Summary: Captain Eggsy Unwin, a British Army officer in stationed in Flanders during The Great War, receives letters from home, including one from his very dear friend, Sir Harry Hart.





	Let Me Live in Your Country, Let Me Sleep By Your Shores

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kyele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyele/gifts).



> Written for the Eighth Day of MMOM, for the prompt "War", and inspired by a comment from my collaborator and greatest enabler, Kyele, who suggested a WWI AU. 
> 
> Eggsy is a little older than in canon, in his late twenties.
> 
> Part One of a two-part series, which will be concluded tomorrow, with the prompt "Peace".
> 
> Title from the Jethro Tull classic, "War Child"

"Capt'n Unwin, sir, you've got letters!" Charlie Hesketh, Eggsy's gangly and often disastrously clumsy sergeant enters without knocking on Eggsy's door.

"Thanks, Charlie." Eggsy holds his hand out for the missives and Charlie goes to hand them over, tripping first on a stool and then crashing into a trunk in the center of the room. It's another minute before Charlie disentangles himself from the mess he's made, rights the furniture, and gives Eggsy the envelopes. 

"Sorry, sir. Don't mean to be so clumsy."

"It's all right." Eager to read his mail in privacy, Eggsy tells his sergeant, "Why don't you head to bed and take advantage of the quiet. It won't last much longer. I'm expecting we'll get our orders to remobilize back to the front in a day or so."

Charlie – like every other man in Eggsy's unit – isn't the least bit eager to go back into the trenches. "That's a good idea, sir."

But Charlie doesn't move and Eggsy raises an eyebrow before saying, "Dismissed, Sergeant Hesketh."

At the command, Charlie salutes, turns on his heel and exits barely avoiding the furniture he'd tripped over earlier and of course forgetting to close the door behind him. Eggsy gets up, closes and locks the door and turns out all but one of the lamps. The rooming house the officers are assigned to lodge in in this remote part of Flanders has indoor plumbing, but no electricity or piped gas. As a ranking officer with reports to file, Eggsy is allotted a generous supply of lamp oil. 

Technically, he shouldn't be using it to read private correspondence, but since there's no one around to report him, who will know?

He puts the lamp and his three letters on the nightstand and takes off his boots and his uniform jacket. After two years at the front, Eggsy's learned it's better to sleep in his clothes.

The bed creaks as Eggsy lies down. The ancient mattress is stuffed with straw and horsehair and is probably riddled with insects, but it's utter luxury compared to the army cots he's become accustomed to sleeping on. He picks up the letters and sees that his mother has written to him. There's also a letter from Roxanne Morton, who he'd met at Oxford during his student days. Eggsy's parents have hoped for an alliance between them, but Roxy's not at all interested in romance and Eggsy, well, he isn't really interested in girls.

The third letter makes Eggsy's heart beat just a bit faster. It's from his dear friend and one-time mentor at University, Sir Harry Hart. He puts that one aside, to read last before the oil runs out.

The news from home is deliberately cheerful. Although it's just past Easter, Eggsy's Mum is making plans to remove from London to the country house in Kent for the summer. Eggsy's little sister is making her governess' life a right terror, but nothing malicious. She's just smart as a whip and has clearly outclassed Miss Minchin's limited intellectual gifts. The annual church fete is – as always – a right mess, with the elderly pastor playing favorites amongst the female parishioners over who gets to run the various committees, not that Mrs. Unwin particularly cares who gets to make pies and who gets to make cakes. It's just an interesting bit of gossip to share. Some of the neighborhood boys have been causing trouble, but of course nothing vicious – just a few overturned flowerpots.

His mum manages to fill three pages with such commonplaces, leaving just a few paragraphs for a note from Eggsy's da. Words of encouragement, of course, and words of caution. And as always, words of love. Lee Unwin is as eloquent as he is brilliant.

Eggsy sighs as he refolds the letter and tucks it back in its envelope. He'll re-read it many times before the next batch of mail catches up with him.

Roxy's letter is all hellfire and invective; she's part of the suffrage movement and while Eggsy absolutely agrees that all adult citizens, regardless of sex or race, should have the right to vote, right now, he's just not up to dealing with Roxy's anger at the inequalities of the British political system. That letter is returned to its envelope for reading at another time.

For safekeeping, Eggsy puts his mum's and Roxy's letters into the book he's reading, and picks up Harry's letter, but he doesn't open it right away. Instead, he summons an image of Harry Hart in his mind – in a way, it's like flipping through one of his mum's fashion magazines, picking the image he likes best. 

There's Professor Hart, complete with a tweed suit under the formal academic robes, stern and remote – and just a little scary with the scar and black patch over his left eye. Then there's his friend, Harry, glass of Scotch in hand, staring intently at the chessboard, contemplating a move that will wipe Eggsy out. Or Sir Harry Hart, dressed in perfect evening formalwear, retying Eggsy's neckwear before they head out for an evening at the opera. Memories of music bring another favorite image of Harry in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, jacket abandoned somewhere, with his violin tucked under his chin, playing a duet with Eggsy, who's accompanying him on the cello as they practice their parts for a Vivaldi concerto.

That might be Eggsy's favorite mental image of Harry, power and strength and unconscious wild beauty.

No, that's not quite true. It's his favorite mental image of Harry _wearing clothes_. 

Eggsy lets his mind drift to the last time he and Harry had been together. They'd argued about Eggsy accepting an officer's commission and when Eggsy had left for Sandhurst for his training, they'd still been angry at each other. Harry, a veteran of the Boer Wars, had a decidedly anti-military and anti-colonial viewpoint; he thought that the war on the continent was an exercise in political aggrandizement and unchecked industrial greed. With only a handful of days before shipping out to France, Eggsy had gone to Harry's rooms at Oxford to try to see if he could reconcile his friend and mentor to Eggsy's decision. And to say goodbye.

Harry had taken one look at Eggsy, pulled him into his arms and kissed him. That kiss – Eggsy's first – had been a revelation. Harry tasted like coffee and Scotch and desperation and Eggsy couldn't get enough of him. He's in Harry's bedroom and Harry has him stripped and naked and on his back and Eggsy's staring at Harry, practically luminous against the dark walls, limned in the golden sunlight bleeding through the curtains.

This is truly Eggsy's favorite image of Harry. It's one he's treasured, the one he calls up in the worst of times, the one that keeps him going when everything else is lost.

Eggsy palms his cock over the rough wool uniform fabric, squeezing lightly. He could free himself and masturbate while reading Harry's letter, but if there's one thing that Harry's taught him, it's the pleasure of anticipation.

So he keeps himself in check and opens Harry's letter.

_My dear Eggsy –_

_I hope this letter finds you safe and healthy and uninjured, that the bombs and bullets miss you. The reports I read in the newspapers relay the terrible conditions in the trenches and I pray that you and your unit are spared such horrors …_

Eggsy sighs. _Oh, Harry, you know all too well that my company is on the front lines._ Despite Harry's distaste for the war, he'd been drafted by Whitehall to provide his expertise. But the letters have to pass the censors and it's easy enough to craft a pretense.

The rest of the letter is as banal as his mum's, but that doesn't trouble Eggsy at all. There's a code in Harry's letters, one that would withstand even the most talent cypher experts, if only because the key is locked inside Eggsy's head.

After two years, it's easy enough to pick out the words that are Harry's real message:

_I miss you and I pray that you return home to me soon. My heart aches for the sight of your sweet face, my body craves the touch your hands, my mind longs for your companionship. I do not sleep for wanting you; no food can satisfy me when I remember the taste of your intimate skin in my mouth. Come back to me my love._

The words are dizzying and Eggsy is transported back into his lover's arms. After all the years as student and mentor, as colleagues - albeit Eggsy as a very junior member of the Senior Common Room at Balliol - and as friends, they had just a week together. Eggsy's been living on those memories for two years, and only God knows when he'll get leave and a chance to see Harry.

Eggsy unbuttons his trousers and pulls out his aching cock. He has nothing but spit to lubricate his palm, but it's enough. He hears the words of Harry's hidden message in Harry's voice and as Eggsy comes, he bites his lip to keep from shouting, "I love you, too, Harry."

**Author's Note:**

> The code that's in Eggsy's head is a musical cypher, based on [Vivaldi's Concerto Violin and Cello in B-flat major, RV 547](https://youtu.be/azKww2wBsNQ), the piece Eggsy remembers practicing with Harry.


End file.
